Drink With Me
by Sunbird Riding Shotgun
Summary: Would the world remember them when they fell? Or would it be like this, a brief bond fire blazing in glory for a few hours at night to be gone by morning?


**A/n:** Taking a slight break from my obsession with tormenting Eliot for a team fic. For any readers not familiar with the song used for this piece it's called "Drink With Me". It's from Les Miz a very well known musical I wouldn't be completely surprised that the entire cast (except maybe Parker) would know.

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**Drink With Me**

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The job was over. They'd done what they could but this time they'd just been too late. Too late to get involved when the activists that had come to them for help when a huge cooperation they were fighting started getting them arrested and charged with exaggerated crimes they'd never committed, going after their leader's families, and bribed everyone involved into silence. Too late to stop a Saturday morning protest from turning deadly. All they'd been able to do was make sure the world knew that Partson Corp. had ordered their guards to attack the protestors, and that these people determined to save the world as best they could had maintained the civil part of their civil disobedience right up until they saw their beloved leaders gunned down.

There would be no cover up. Partson Corp was already paying.

The job was done now. The team was leaving town the next morning. None of them had spoken about any plans to go to the memorial service for the three women and two men who'd been killed at the barricade the day before. They'd been unable to really acknowledge why this job was different. Half their clients were fighting for revenge because someone had died. It was just this time the three who had come to them for help to protect their followers and loved ones, who had decided to lead the protest despite the death threats they'd received, who had talked and joked with the team all through the early stages of this job. That team that was more than a team like the leverage team was…

They'd been shot and killed yesterday trying to keep order and protect those who trusted them as leaders.

The victims this time had been as close to friends of the team as the team was likely to get with a client.

There had been no plans to go to the bondfire party held in the honor of the fallen but when they all found themselves on the edge of the light of the blaze that seemed almost like a pyre no one seemed entirely surprised. They stood together, watching the somber "party" as people drank and sang and cried together. Someone wandered over to offer them all a beer and a few shaken words of consolation before returning to the others.

Eliot was the first to break the silence, probably the most used to loosing those he knew though if the way he and pretty Lilly, the firey red headed of the tree leaders, had been looking at each other this might be a little more personal. "Drink with me." He muttered absently as he took a swig from his bottle.

Sophie looked at him, her eyes softening with understanding. She turned back to the bondfire and sighed, her mouth moving a moment before she got her voice to work and a song slowly wove around them. "Drink with me, to days gone by. To the life that used to be."

Eliot gave a somewhat pained smile picking up the song where she'd left off. "Heres to pretty girls who went to our heads."

"Heres to witty boys we took to our beds." Parkers somewhat mangled attempt at the next line raised eyebrows, though weather it was because she knew the song or it's suggestion wasn't clear.

"Heres to them and heres to you." Five mouths moved in song or muttering.

Nate took a breath and a sip, wishing for something stronger. He was having trouble with all this. The memory of his son and the reminder that this might be for one of their own someday… Just a little bondfire blazing in the night that would be gone and forgotten by morning. "Drink with me, todays gone by. Could it be you fear to die? Will the world remember you when you fall? Could it be your death means nothing at all?"

Sophie joined him for the last line, ironic sad smile on her face as she took his hand in hers. "Is your life, just one more lie?"

"Drink with me" Alec sang before the words bounced around the group. He sighed and raised his bottle. "At the shrine of friendship raise your glass high."

"Let the wine of friendship never run dry." They chorused softly even as the brief moment and connection faded and they were already beginning to feel weird for the musical moment.

"If I die, I die for you." As song faded away one last line sung gravely and low as their specialist wandered away into the darkness let the magic fade without awkwardness.

They dispersed after that, and no one mentioned the night again but there was some feeling, an understanding. It wasn't anything they could name or even really identify more than just that it meant something. They had something.

And sometimes knowing you had something was more important than knowing what it was.


End file.
